By the way I did the numbers you requested . See below for the results.
But first,
after you said "Anamorphic widescreen" on DVD and
Ok the way that is worded is one of the reasons I wish the term anamorphic wasn't used to differentiate or in relation to DVDsJoshua Clinard wrote:Actually, it is quite the opposite. Anamorphic widescreen is shot on a 4x3 negative using special lenses, and then streched to an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 at the theater, or on a widescreen T.V.
Altho Joshua is refering to Anamorphic widescreen *discs* there too, it almost reads as if 1.85 films are anamorphically shot and projected too.
I'm sometimes under the impression there's a little bit of ambiguity about the term anamorphic related to films, negatives, prints, lens, videos, dvds, displays...
To be sure, 1.85 is never shot or projected anamorphically on film, it's shot and projected "flat" (with spherical lenses). And technically, only very few 1.85 films (those shot in Super35-1.85) are shot on "4:3" cameras (which are Silent (or "Full") 1.333 aperture cameras). 1.85 films are shot "letterboxed" inside Academy ratio (1.375) sound cameras, or for a time, used to be shot "letterboxed" inside VistaVision ratio (1.50) cameras.
(Academy ratio cameras are not only different from 4:3 cameras just by the small 0.04 difference in aspect ratio width. The image dimensions are totally different (15.25mm x 21mm Academy vs 18mm x 24mm Silent) and the lens central axis is off center by about 2mm to the right in relation to 4:3 cameras)
And both "4:3" dvds and "16:9" dvds can be considered technically "anamorphic"
Anamorphic means (or is used) to denote any process (be it optical or electronic) in which images are stored in a different shape (height to width proportion) than normal (or "flat").
In film, this mainly means Cinemascope, which used an "anamorphic" lens (as opposed to the flat or "spherical" lenses used in normal photography, "spherical" coming from the fact that a sphere (or circle) remains a sphere going through it w/o change, while on an "anamorphic" lens it changes from a sphere to an ellipse or viceversa) in this case with a 2x squeeze ratio to put an 2.667 image into a 1.333 wide 4:3 Silent aperture camera negative.
Later the cameras altered their width and center to accomodate the different soundtrack formats in a way very similar to the Academy ones differed from the 4:3 ones. The width in the current incarnation is about 1.195. When projected, this "squeezed 2x" negative image is "unsqueezed" by the corresponding anamorphic projector lens back to the original image shape of (currently) 2.39 wide.
(Some "Scope" ratio films use images shot on spherical formats, like Superscope, Techniscope, and the one very popular today, Super35-2.39. In the lab these "flat" negatives are squeezed onto standart "anamorphical" Scope prints for projection)
Then there's Technirama that used the 1.50 ratio VistaVision negative with an anamorphic lens with a 1.5x squeeze factor shooting 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25 wide images. These were printed onto anamorphic 2.35 Scope prints and flat 2.20 70mm prints.
And last, we have UltraPanavision/Camera-65 format that used an anamorphic lens with a slight 1.25x squeeze to shoot 1.25 x 2.20 = 2.75 wide images onto 70mm film. These 70mm prints were subsequently projected with the corresponding 1.25x anamorphic lens, or optically reduced onto regular 35mm anamorphic Scope prints.
As for DVDs... Since the true aspect ratio of the image data file is 480 x 720 (1.50 aspect ratio) in NTSC or 576 x 720 (1.25 aspect ratio) on PAL no matter if it's encoded for "4:3" displays or "16:9" displays, you could say both encodings ARE anamorphic cus their image shape are not normal and are de-squeezed or stretched in-route to their proper shape on the corresponding display. We tend to think of the 16:Niners as the "anamorphic" or "enhanced" ones cus we've been using 4:3 video displays since forever.
Even the term "enhanced fo 16:9 (or widescreen) displays" is a little misleading. It should say "Coded for 16:9 display". Since widescreen movies fit the 16:9 shape better and therefore use the available pixel space more efficientlly, only widescreen movies are "enhanced" RELATIVE to their "letterboxed" wasteful "4:3" counterparts. But you could argue that Fantasia's Sorcerer Apprentice segment is "enhanced" for 4:3 displays in the Fantasia disc, compared to the version that is "pillarboxed" in 16:9 in Fantasia2000.
disneyunlimited wrote:I'll accept that it is possible to encode a 1.66:1 image anamorphically but only, as you say, if they add black bars to the left and right of the picture which sort of defeats the purpose as you're losing vertical resolution just so you can improve the horizontal resolution! (No doubt, deathie mouse can do the pixel calculations for us and explain it a bit better!)
So Luke wrote:Anything wider than 1.45:1 or so (didn't do the math, but I remember hearing this) still has more resolution windowboxed in 16x9 than letterboxed.
So I went and derived the numbers.
(you can see lots more of them in http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... php?t=4392
This is what I found out:
If we asume a base aspect ratios of 1.33 and 1.78 for the "4:3" and "16:9" discs
the aspect ratio cut off occurs at 1.54
(Movies wider than 1.54 have more pixels in "16:9" discs, movies narrower than 1.54 have more pixels in "4:3" discs)
If we asume that the base aspect ratios are 1.37 and 1.82 respectively (The way they would be displayed on a correctly timed video display):
the cut off is 1.58 then.
There's another side to this: Till a movie reaches 1.78 wide (1.82 if we use the precise video display timings) it will look worse on a 4:3 display if it is coded for "16:9" because the downconverted resolution will be less than if it was letterboxed in "4:3". Solution: Buy a 16:9 display
)Since Darby's aspect ratio was 1.75, indeed in theory, it would have more pixels if coded for 16:9.
(But incidentally, a PAL "Fullframe" open matte or "letterboxed" 4:3 disc would look almost identical in quality as an NTSC 16:9 disc) (Now, if a PAL 16:9 version were made...
)But it appears we won't have a 16:9 Darby so for now it's either zooming or home brewed "projectionist" masking for widescreening it.
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I want 23:9 displays
